TouchPad longevity gets a boost from Android/Ubuntu ports

The modding community has developed experimental Android and Ubuntu ports for …

HP put the brakes on its ambitious webOS strategy earlier this month after announcing plans to unload its entire consumer hardware business. Although the platform could potentially live on through future licensees, HP doesn't plan to deliver new products with the software. To unload the current stock of TouchPad tablets, HP kicked off a fire sale and put the $499 device up for grabs at a generous $99. The sell-off was met with huge consumer demand, prompting HP to light up production for one more run.

The big unanswered question, however, is what will happen when HP eventually sheds its commitment to the operating system. If licensees doesn't take over stewardship of webOS and the platform stagnates, those Touchpads aren't going to be particularly useful. Fortunately, the enthusiast community is coming up with some technical solutions and finding ways to bring additional third-party software and alternate operating systems to the TouchPad.

One option is an Ubuntu chroot environment, which makes it possible for users to get conventional desktop Linux applications running on HP's device in an X11 server. Linux software that can be compiled to run on ARM CPUs will work on the TouchPad. In a YouTube demo video, you can see LXDE, Chromium, and Abiword running on the TouchPad. Installation instructions are available from the webOS Roundup forums.

Android on the TouchPad is another intriguing option that's starting to come together. There is already an experimental port of CyanogenMod that can run on the device. It's still not mature or stable yet and it's not a tablet-optimized user experience because it's based on Gingerbread source code (due to the lack of Honeycomb source availability). We could see much better Android builds emerge for the TouchPad after Android's Ice Cream Sandwich release, which will hopefully come with source code.

Oddly enough, a small handful of consumers who purchased TouchPads during the fire sale received developer hardware units with Android preinstalled. These are believed to have originated from Qualcomm's internal development labs and were clearly not intended for distribution to end users. It's unclear how these prototypes ended up in the sales channel.

One of the recipients filmed a video, which you can see at Geek.com, and offered to rip a system image for the modding community—which could help accelerate efforts to enable full hardware support for the TouchPad in community Android builds.

Of course, webOS could still have some life left in it. If the platform gets licensed and the third-party developer community sticks around, there might not be much of a need for alternate software. It looks like it could be a nice hardware environment for prototyping jQuery Mobile applications or any number of other useful tasks. The availability of alternative platforms is a nice safety net, however, that will prevent the device from turning into a glorified photo frame in the event that official support completely evaporates.